Seaport Street Scene

Mystic Seaport

No. 100

I see from my list in Blogger that this post will be my 100th post since I started this blog back in October.  I've enjoyed sharing my pictures, and I thank everyone who has looked and commented on them.  I hope you liked what you find here.   Since it is sort of milestone, I thought I would post something a little different and pose a question or two about my photography, workflow, and post processing.  The reason I'm doing this is simple.  I follow a lot of photo blogs, and I find everyone's else's pictures much better than mine.  It could be that I'm my own toughest critic, but comparing my pictures to those I see on other blogs, mine tend to look a little "over processed" and less than natural looking. It could be that others have been at this a lot longer and are much better photographers than I am.  Maybe others think differently, but I'd be interested to find out what others think.  So in an effort to post what I consider to be more natural looking photos in the future, I'm looking carefully at my workflow and the programs I'm using to do the post processing.  I'm also looking at my camera settings at time of capture and how they might influence my final images after post processing.  There are so many variables to control, but I have to admit, I do enjoy tinkering with all the aspects of digital photography.

As an example of what I'm talking about.  This first image is typical of my normal workflow of images in this blog.  It's the jpg image, straight out of the camera, with a curve adjustment, highlight recovery, shadow recovery and sharpening done in Aperture.  I then exported the jpg for this blog.

This next image is the same photo as above, reprocessed from the original RAW file using Nikon's Capture NX 2.   When starting with the RAW file, I eliminated all the camera settings used to produce the the jpg above.  I changed the white balance, did a curve adjustment and sharpened.  I saved the image as a jpg, and  prepared it for this blog exactly this same way as the first image.

I know which image I like better.  There are some subtle differences and I'd like to know what others think.       Feel free to comment on any aspect of the image whether it be subject matter, composition, exposure, whatever.  And finally, if others do a lot of post processing, do you adjust the image for a pleasing image, or to the way you remember the image looking at the time of capture?   Thanks for looking.

Machinery III

I originally posted a picture of this machine here.  This is a close-up shot of that particular piece of machinery.  I can't really take a lot of credit for the post processing I did for this image.  My skills in post processing consists of trying a number of "presets" that are available in the Apple's Aperture, until I find one that I like.  I think a true "artist" would never use some preset, but until my creativity grows, I'll use the presets, and even add to my collection of presets.  I was inspired to do this by a post in the blog Taken for Granted, which I follow.  The images featured some nice black and white conversions of machinery.

One More Train Picture

Essex, CT

Please allow me to post one more picture of the steam train in Essex, CT.  I posted a few pictures of this train recently and wanted to share one more.  I don't do a lot of post processing of my digital pictures.  Normally I'll add a slight curve adjustment, then darken the highlights a little, a bring up the shadows and finally sharpen a bit.   This is all done in Apple's Aperture 3.  I felt this picture, needed to be rendered in black and white.  I started with one of the many Aperture B&W presets, and adjusted the color filters to get the version seen here.  I'm sure others more skilled than I could improve upon this.  They would look at the image straight out of the camera and know exactly what adjustments need to be made to bring out the best in the image whereas I play with the adjustments until I get an image I like.  

Wolfe's Neck Woods - Two Versions

Despite all my reading about photography, especially digital photography, there is still so much I don't know.  I got my first digital camera back in 2001, a Canon G1, which at the time was pretty much the state of the art for an advanced "point and shoot" camera.  It was highly regarded then and the most recent iteration, the Canon G12 is still well reviewed.  In the intervening years I purchased a Nikon D60 for my wife, and most recently a Nikon D90 for myself.  So in the grand scheme of things, I consider myself a novice in the world of digital photography.  I'm even more of a novice when it comes to sharing my pictures via blogging, Facebook, or any of the other many services one can find on the internet.  

I use a MacBook Pro to download my images, and Apple's Aperture to keep them all organized and to do some post processing.  I also occasionally use Photoshop Elements or Nikon's Capture NX2 for some advance photo editing.  With all these options, I'm still trying to find the best "workflow" to post my images online.  I know I can ask others, and I'm sure I would get dozens of different opinions on what works best.  The scientist part of me says, just do the experiment and see what looks the best.  In this case, the two images above are the same image, first adjusted in Aperture.

The top image was further processed with the Aperture plugin BorderFX, which only added the border, any maybe some additional sharpening, although I'm not entirely sure of that.  I'm not sure if I like adding the border or not to the pictures I post here.  The border does seem to add to the picture, but would take away from the simple, minimalist style of the blog.  I'm still trying to decide on which way I would like to go here.  The only thing I really know is that pictures on other blogs look a lot better than my images.  In most cases, I'm sure they are much stronger images to begin with.  Afterall, most of the blogs I follow are done by real photographers.  Even my better images might suffer from a lack of good post processing skills and/or a good workflow for properly presenting them on the web.  Hence, the reason for this post.   Thanks for looking and if you have any comments on which you like, I'd be happy to hear them.  I'll be tweaking this blog for some time to come.

Finally, I just want to say that my thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected here in Connecticut by last weekend's snow storm.  There was extensive damage, and there are many without power.